Timothy H. Lim
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780300164343
- eISBN:
- 9780300164954
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300164343.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Judaism
The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls provides unprecedented insight into the nature of the Hebrew Bible or Old Testament before its fixation. This book presents a complete account of the formation ...
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The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls provides unprecedented insight into the nature of the Hebrew Bible or Old Testament before its fixation. This book presents a complete account of the formation of the canon in Ancient Judaism from the emergence of the Torah in the Persian period to the final acceptance of the list of twenty-two/twenty-four books in the Rabbinic period. Using the Hebrew Bible, the Scrolls, the Apocrypha, the Letter of Aristeas, the writings of Philo, Josephus, the New Testament, and Rabbinic literature as primary evidence the book argues that throughout the post-exilic period up to around 100 ce, there was not one official “canon” accepted by all Jews; rather, there existed a plurality of collections of scriptures that were authoritative for different communities. Examining the literary sources and historical circumstances that led to the emergence of authoritative scriptures in ancient Judaism, the book proposes a theory of the majority canon that posits that the Pharisaic canon became the canon of Rabbinic Judaism in the centuries after the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple.Less
The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls provides unprecedented insight into the nature of the Hebrew Bible or Old Testament before its fixation. This book presents a complete account of the formation of the canon in Ancient Judaism from the emergence of the Torah in the Persian period to the final acceptance of the list of twenty-two/twenty-four books in the Rabbinic period. Using the Hebrew Bible, the Scrolls, the Apocrypha, the Letter of Aristeas, the writings of Philo, Josephus, the New Testament, and Rabbinic literature as primary evidence the book argues that throughout the post-exilic period up to around 100 ce, there was not one official “canon” accepted by all Jews; rather, there existed a plurality of collections of scriptures that were authoritative for different communities. Examining the literary sources and historical circumstances that led to the emergence of authoritative scriptures in ancient Judaism, the book proposes a theory of the majority canon that posits that the Pharisaic canon became the canon of Rabbinic Judaism in the centuries after the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple.
P. R. Ackroyd and G. N. Stanton
- Published in print:
- 1990
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780192132543
- eISBN:
- 9780191670053
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780192132543.003.0007
- Subject:
- Religion, Biblical Studies
This chapter is concerned with the social context of the Old Testament. The books of the Old Testament are by and large considered the products of the upper sections of society in ancient Israel. ...
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This chapter is concerned with the social context of the Old Testament. The books of the Old Testament are by and large considered the products of the upper sections of society in ancient Israel. This is so because literacy was the preserve of a relatively small group and the establishment and development of historical traditions was the work of intellectual elite. Whenever servants or slaves are referred to it is always assumed that the readers would be those who might themselves possess them. This chapter also takes up the question of the uniqueness of Israelites and their exalted position in the eyes of God. Referring to Max Weber's Ancient Judaism it is suggested that the Old Testament has provided one of the matrices from which serious sociology study developed.Less
This chapter is concerned with the social context of the Old Testament. The books of the Old Testament are by and large considered the products of the upper sections of society in ancient Israel. This is so because literacy was the preserve of a relatively small group and the establishment and development of historical traditions was the work of intellectual elite. Whenever servants or slaves are referred to it is always assumed that the readers would be those who might themselves possess them. This chapter also takes up the question of the uniqueness of Israelites and their exalted position in the eyes of God. Referring to Max Weber's Ancient Judaism it is suggested that the Old Testament has provided one of the matrices from which serious sociology study developed.
John David Penniman
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780300222760
- eISBN:
- 9780300228007
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300222760.003.0003
- Subject:
- Religion, History of Christianity
Greek literature from ancient Judaism reflects many of the same strategies and assumptions surrounding food and proper formation found in Greek paideia and Roman family values. Indeed, certain Jewish ...
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Greek literature from ancient Judaism reflects many of the same strategies and assumptions surrounding food and proper formation found in Greek paideia and Roman family values. Indeed, certain Jewish authors (including the author of 2 Maccabees, Philo of Alexandria, the apostle Paul) worked with the prominent notion that food carries an essence in order to think through the very characteristics of their “Jewishness.” In so doing, they devised similar gastronomic regimes out of milk and solid food. Yet something was also different in how food functioned in this literature as the material basis of a deeper religious bond. The three sets of Jewish texts examined in this chapter indicate how the idioms, values, and embodied politics of Roman rule could be repurposed within a specific provincial culture. And they do so in such a way that emphasizes their own scriptural and philosophical commitments.Less
Greek literature from ancient Judaism reflects many of the same strategies and assumptions surrounding food and proper formation found in Greek paideia and Roman family values. Indeed, certain Jewish authors (including the author of 2 Maccabees, Philo of Alexandria, the apostle Paul) worked with the prominent notion that food carries an essence in order to think through the very characteristics of their “Jewishness.” In so doing, they devised similar gastronomic regimes out of milk and solid food. Yet something was also different in how food functioned in this literature as the material basis of a deeper religious bond. The three sets of Jewish texts examined in this chapter indicate how the idioms, values, and embodied politics of Roman rule could be repurposed within a specific provincial culture. And they do so in such a way that emphasizes their own scriptural and philosophical commitments.
Michael D. Swartz
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- March 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780814740934
- eISBN:
- 9780814723784
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9780814740934.003.0006
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society
This concluding chapter states how in ancient Judaism, methods of interpretation and discourse on the nature of signs were not confined to scripture and its interpretation, but extended to the world ...
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This concluding chapter states how in ancient Judaism, methods of interpretation and discourse on the nature of signs were not confined to scripture and its interpretation, but extended to the world of celestial, terrestrial, and ritual things and occurrences. The primary circles of rabbinic authorities were more likely holding to the notion of the Torah, as elaborated by scholastic tradition, as the exclusive source of revelation. But at the same time, some sectors of Jewish culture in late antiquity embraced alternatives to this worldview. This suggests that the pantextual theory of revelation was an ideological development in rabbinic thought that shared space with a more encompassing view of divine signification.Less
This concluding chapter states how in ancient Judaism, methods of interpretation and discourse on the nature of signs were not confined to scripture and its interpretation, but extended to the world of celestial, terrestrial, and ritual things and occurrences. The primary circles of rabbinic authorities were more likely holding to the notion of the Torah, as elaborated by scholastic tradition, as the exclusive source of revelation. But at the same time, some sectors of Jewish culture in late antiquity embraced alternatives to this worldview. This suggests that the pantextual theory of revelation was an ideological development in rabbinic thought that shared space with a more encompassing view of divine signification.
Carol Harrison, Caroline Humfress, and Isabella Sandwell (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- April 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780199656035
- eISBN:
- 9780191767821
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199656035.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion in the Ancient World, Early Christian Studies
What do we mean when we talk about ‘being Christian’ in Late Antiquity? This volume brings together 16 world-leading scholars of ancient Judaism, Christianity, and Greco-Roman culture and society to ...
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What do we mean when we talk about ‘being Christian’ in Late Antiquity? This volume brings together 16 world-leading scholars of ancient Judaism, Christianity, and Greco-Roman culture and society to explore this question, in honour of the groundbreaking scholarship of Gillian Clark. After an introduction to the volume’s dedicatee and themes by Averil Cameron, Section I, ‘Being Christian through Reading, Writing, and Hearing’, analyses the roles that literary genre, writing, reading, hearing, and the literature of the past played in the formation of what it meant to be Christian. Section II moves on to analyse how late antique Christians sought to create, maintain, and represent Christian communities: communities that were both ‘textually created’ and ‘enacted in living realities’. Finally Section III, ‘The Particularities of Being Christian’, approaches what it was to be Christian from a number of different modes of representation, each of which raises questions about certain kinds of ‘particularities’, for example, gender, location, education, and culture. Bringing together primary source material from the early Imperial period up to the seventh century AD and covering both the Eastern and Western Empires, the volume collectively explores how individuals and Christian communities sought to relate themselves to existing traditions, social structures, and identities, at the same time as questioning and critiquing the past(s) in their present.Less
What do we mean when we talk about ‘being Christian’ in Late Antiquity? This volume brings together 16 world-leading scholars of ancient Judaism, Christianity, and Greco-Roman culture and society to explore this question, in honour of the groundbreaking scholarship of Gillian Clark. After an introduction to the volume’s dedicatee and themes by Averil Cameron, Section I, ‘Being Christian through Reading, Writing, and Hearing’, analyses the roles that literary genre, writing, reading, hearing, and the literature of the past played in the formation of what it meant to be Christian. Section II moves on to analyse how late antique Christians sought to create, maintain, and represent Christian communities: communities that were both ‘textually created’ and ‘enacted in living realities’. Finally Section III, ‘The Particularities of Being Christian’, approaches what it was to be Christian from a number of different modes of representation, each of which raises questions about certain kinds of ‘particularities’, for example, gender, location, education, and culture. Bringing together primary source material from the early Imperial period up to the seventh century AD and covering both the Eastern and Western Empires, the volume collectively explores how individuals and Christian communities sought to relate themselves to existing traditions, social structures, and identities, at the same time as questioning and critiquing the past(s) in their present.
